Literature reviews are often used as part of teaching undergraduates about secondary research. The assignment, however, presents challenges for inexperienced researchers and writers and can be difficult for instructors to read and grade. This "quick fix" piece offers an alternative assignment to begin students in gaining secondary…

Undergraduates report a variety of reasons for not reading assigned text(s), including confusion regarding instructors' expectations, while faculty report using reading as a major instructional tool and attest to the negative consequences of students' lack of reading. To bridge this divide, we propose Task-Oriented Reading Instruction (TORI) as a…

First Year Seminars have been found to positively impact student experience and retention in universities, especially in large-outcome measures such as grade point average, retention rates, and ultimately, graduation rates. Common learning experiences, a high-impact practice, such as course readings, a syllabus template, and discussion topics help…

The benefits of in-class discussion, a form of active learning, are well-documented; in particular, discussions allow students the opportunity to learn from their peers. Yet students often treat discussions as 'down' or 'free' time. If students are not taking notes during discussion and reviewing those notes later on, they may not be learning much…